To facilitate and automate the assembly of electrical connections of electric/electronic components of a generic machine or device, connectors for accommodating electrical terminals to be connected to electrical connection wires are currently being used increasingly.
In particular, connecting assemblies thus formed are used in wiring to be mass-produced.
For this purpose, wiring machines are commercially available which automatically connect the electrical wires and the metallic terminals.
To allow wiring machines to work adequately, they must be fed with connectors and corresponding terminals in the simplest and most effective possible manner.
Feeding individual connectors was found immediately to be inadequate for wiring machines, both because of problems related to solving the dynamics of feeding and because these machines require a continuous feed stream at a very high rate.
Accordingly, the production of “packs” constituted by a plurality of connectors arranged mutually side by side in succession on hollow elongated supports has been provided.
However, this solution is less than ideal, due to the rigidity of the packs and to the difficulties encountered in handling them.
In order to obviate the drawbacks of feeding the “packs” of connectors in automatic machines (and the high costs of the product), coils have been provided which are constituted by a plurality of mutually connected connectors.
The solutions have been orientated toward the lateral connection of the connectors, in practice obtaining all the electrical terminals in series.
For example, the connection has been obtained by connecting the sides of the covers of the connectors by means of complementary male and female tabs (reference should be made, for example, to U.S. Pat. No. 6,685,507).
Another type of connection is provided by means of monolithic straps between sides of contiguous connectors: in practice, monolithic chains of connectors linked by flexible straps are provided, said straps being cut when it is necessary to apply the connector to a user device (reference should be made, for example, to U.S. Pat. No. 6,089,914).